FT Alphaville ( Thanks / Danke )!"We’re good at this".…losing money, that is. Not due diligence or canny dealmaking.

Selected excepts from Ken Lewis (Banker of the Year) on the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch conference call, September 15th, 2008.

Enjoy!

…we could have rolled the dice and possibly could have got it at a cheaper price. We thought the long-term benefits were so overwhelming, it was such a strategic opportunity that we elected not to roll the dice and to go ahead and do it at this time.

Question: can you provide a little more colour on some of the due diligence that was done?

Well, Joe, you want to go over it again in terms of- and the JC Flowers piece is key because they were renewing something- an effort that had already gone on and been very, very extensive.

Errr…

Clearly we had a tremendous amount of historical knowledge both as a competitor with Merrill Lynch and reviewed and analyze the company over the years.

Mr Lewis, have you ever visited the planet earth?

…it’s not as if we don’t have a very significant knowledge of the markets around the asset classes that are most problematic. In addition, as you would expect, we deployed the team that we would ordinarily deploy in these types of situations, which had well over 45 people from our team on site as well as others offsite outside counsel and the like.

3 Comments:

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